Complicity and Contraception: Rethinking Hobby Lobby’s Claim of ‘Substantial Burden on the Exercise of Religion’
Within the next month, the United States Supreme Court will decide whether for-profit corporations shall receive an exemption from providing certain types of contraceptives that are otherwise mandated for healthcare coverage by federal law …
Read MoreThe advantages and disadvantages of stigmatizing smoking
A new study among students, found that those who smoked cannabis performed better academically than their tobacco smoking, stigmatized peers. The study has been collecting data among students (8,331 in total) in grade 7,9 and 11 for 30 year…
Read MoreNotes from a philosophical Starbucks
Modern High Streets in the western world are dreary, wretched places. They’re all the same as each other – brash, jostling queues of the ubiquitous supranationals that are our real governors. They’ve shut down the shops owned by real people…
Read MoreMoral Luck Revisited
The tragic sinking of the South Korean ferry raises again the problem of moral luck which Bernard Williams did so much to expose in his famous 1976 article on that topic. The South Korean president has now claimed that the captain of the fe…
Read MoreMore cyborg justice: André interviews Rebecca Roache about the future of punishment
by Rebecca Roache Follow Rebecca on Twitter here My original blog post about the future of punishment can be found here. I clarified my view and provided links to media and blog coverage of these ideas here. Many bloggers responded t…
Read MoreMurder or mercy?
The newspapers today are full of the horrifying story of three children who were found dead in their family home in South London on Tuesday. The children had all apparently been diagnosed with a severe genetic disorder (spinal muscular atr…
Read More“Whoa though, does it ever burn” – Why the consumer market for brain stimulation devices will be a good thing, as long as it is regulated
In many places around the world, there are people connecting electrodes to their heads to electrically stimulate their brains. Their intentions are often to boost various aspect of mental performance for skill development, gaming or just to…
Read MoreDiscrimination against the (historically) privileged
Most cases of discrimination involve someone who belongs to a historically subordinated group being unfairly treated, because they belong to that group. Must all cases of discrimination fit this mould? Here are two, involving people who cla…
Read MoreTerminal Illness and The Right Not to Know
The parents of a young woman named Vickie Harvey, who tragically died at the age of 24 from acute myeloid leukaemia, have launched a campaign to give patients the right not to know that they are terminally ill. Eric and Lyn Harvey claim th…
Read MoreCrowd homebuying (or: How to own a home with no savings and no mortgage)
by Rebecca Roache Follow Rebecca on Twitter here I originally posted this on my own blog. It’s not the usual sort of post I write for Practical Ethics, in that it’s not going to involve any ethical debate. But neither is it an e…
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